Intersectionality and Family-Friendly Policies in the Federal Government
Date | 01 January 2017 |
DOI | 10.1177/0095399715623314 |
Published date | 01 January 2017 |
Author | Norma M. Riccucci,Madinah F. Hamidullah |
Subject Matter | Articles |
Administration & Society
2017, Vol. 49(1) 105 –120
© The Author(s) 2016
DOI: 10.1177/0095399715623314
journals.sagepub.com/home/aas
Article
Intersectionality
and Family-Friendly
Policies in the
Federal Government:
Perceptions of Women
of Color
Madinah F. Hamidullah1 and Norma M. Riccucci1
Abstract
This is an exploratory study that examines federal employee’s
satisfaction with work–life balance or family-friendly policies. We rely
on intersectionality as a theoretical framework to examine how gender,
race, and class interact in the formation of their views. Drawing from
the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, we examine how minority
women compare with non-minority women regarding their perception
of fairness of programs and policies aimed at the promotion of work–life
balance. This topic is significant because satisfaction and participation
in work–life balance programs can have implications for overall job
performance and satisfaction. Our findings suggest that race, education,
and proximity to retirement all play a role in work–life balance (family-
friendly) policy satisfaction.
Keywords
work–life balance, family-friendly policy, intersectionality, gender, race
1Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA
Corresponding Author:
Madinah F. Hamidullah, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Rutgers University-
Newark, 111 Washington St., Newark, NJ 07102, USA.
Email: madinahf@gmail.com
623314AASXXX10.1177/0095399715623314Administration & SocietyHamidullah and Riccucci
research-article2016
106 Administration & Society 49(1)
Very little research has explored the issue of intersectionality in public admin-
istration. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), the term is
used to describe the significance of not just race or gender, but the interaction
of race and gender in the formation of worldviews. Crenshaw saw disparities
in how the law responded to discriminatory acts based on both race and gen-
der. African American women, for example, experience exclusions based on
race and gender and even class. White women, however, do not conceptual-
ize the same experiences from the standpoint of race. Intersectionality, then,
points to the challenges and complexities that woman of color face not just in
the workplace, but in everyday life.
The purpose of this article is to provide an exploratory examination of
women federal employee’s satisfaction with work–life balance or family-
friendly policies. We rely on intersectionality as a theoretical framework to
examine how gender, race, and class interact in the formation of their views
and satisfaction. Drawing from the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey
(FEVS), we examine how women of color, compared with all women as well
as White women perceive the fairness of programs and policies aimed at the
promotion of work–life balance. One of the most pressing issues today,
women continue to struggle to meet the demands of work as well as child or
elderly care. President Obama, recognizing these challenges, convened a
Working Families Summit in June of 2014 that brought together members of
Congress, the media, business groups, and labor leaders to address the issues
facing today’s working families. President Obama stated that “family leave,
child care, workplace flexibility, a decent wage—these are not frills . . . They
are basic needs” (Baker, 2014, p. A17). This issue is significant because sat-
isfaction with the work–life interface has implications for overall job perfor-
mance and satisfaction.
Intersectionality Theory
Intersectionality discourse has burgeoned since it was first introduced by
Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Crenshaw illustrated through a legal analysis
that race and gender are treated as mutually exclusive categories in antidis-
crimination law; she further illustrated that this tendency was prevalent his-
torically in feminist theory as well. As a result, Black women are “erased” in
terms of social identity. She argues that this
single-axis framework erases Black women in the conceptualization,
identification and remediation of race and sex discrimination by limiting inquiry
to the experiences of otherwise-privileged members of the group. In other
words, in race discrimination cases, discrimination tends to be viewed in terms
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